Category: News from WARC

TOVIDE Semou Noel. Tovide is a PhD student from Benin. He is working on a thesis on the effects of the contamination of millet and sorghum, which are among the main foods of West Africans. The objective of his research is to evaluate the levels of contamination of millet, sorghum and their products (porridge, paste, drink …). For Tovide, mycotoxins of the genus Fumonisines, Aflatoxins and Ochiatoxins are the main cause of degradation of stored seeds and seeds. He believes it is necessary to eliminate, or considerably reduce this high contamination which can give rise to an acute symptoms leading to death. He plans to travel to Burkina Faso for his research.

KONAN Louis Nguessan. Konan a PhD student from Cote d’Ivoire. His research focuses on evaluating the impact of different fire regimes on the carbon stock and the physiological state of soil micro-organisms in the forest-savanna contact zone of Côte d’Ivoire. Land degradation and increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are among the most debated issues at the global level. It is therefore vital for it to assess the different fire regimes appropriate for the conservation of biodiversity and the reduction of the carbon stock of the soil which contributes to global warming. Mr. Konan hopes to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases and the conservation of soil fertility in Côte d’Ivoire. Konan will be in Burkina Faso for his research.

YUSUF Rafatu Talatu. Yusuf is a Nigerian Master’s degree student working on the fabrication of catalytic foam filters based on perovskite catalysts for diesel soot emission control. Talatu is working on methods to reduce to reduce soot emissions which are a component of smoke with depilating effects. It is highly life-threatening because of its incidence of respiratory and mortal cardiovascular diseases. Ms. Yusuf intends to work on her research in Ghana.

SAMA Hemayoro. Mr Sama is a Burkinabé doctoral student. He works on the resistance of Jatropha Curcas to the phyto-pathogenic fungi in these species. For Hemayaro, many West African countries are trying to find an alternative to fossil fuels by experimenting with Jatropha Curcas to produce biofuel. Unfortunately, there is low productivity of jatropha due to some resistances of ecotypes. Mr Sama intends to study the resistance of Jatropha Curcas accessions in Burkina Faso and find additional Jatropha varieties and thus increase production. Sama will carry out his research in Benin.

A collaboration between WARA/WARC, the National Museum of African American History & Culture, and Universite Cheikh Anta Diop

February 2016

A Symposium on Race, Racism and the Construction of Black Modernities was held in Dakar on February 7-12, 2016. For this event, WARC/WARA partnered with the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and the IFAN institution at Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), Dakar. This was yet another illustration of WARA/WARC’s role as a bridge for the promotion of academic and cultural cooperation between West African and US learning and cultural institutions.

Over three days and in three different venues (WARC, UCAD and IFAN), in-depth presentations were made and insightful discussions conducted over various topics centering on race, race relations and the advancement of black communities.

Eminent scholars from the US and West Africa attended the learned gathering and gave substantial food for thought to the dozens of students who filled the various conference rooms over three consecutive days. Featured speaker was Professor Michael Blakey (Anthropology),of William and Mary College, Director of the Institute for Historical Biology. Other international scholars participating included Alain Froment, Jemima Pierre, Ibrahima Thiaw, Deborah Mack, Dean Rehberger, Michael Green, and Francois Richard. The opening ceremony recorded opening statements by representatives of the NMAAHC, WARC, UCAD, IFAN as well as the US Embassy in Dakar and was attended by students, scholars from two US Universities and Cheikh Anta Diop University.

KOMIVI DOSSA is a Beninois Ph.D candidate at UCAD working on sesame, which plays an important part in the lives of rural people in West Africa. His research is on food security, particularly on the physiological and enzymatic mechanisms of drought resistance in sesame. (See more).

KEITA IBRAHIM is a Ph.D candidate in Microbian and Cellular Biotechnology at the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He is working on indigenous yeasts and metabolites generated by the so-called “Rabile” which is the dregs of the local beer named “Dolo”. (See more).

KOFFI YAO BERNARD is a Ph.D candidate in Agroecology from Cote d’Ivoire. Using ecological intensification, he is conducting his research on the microbian community of the soils fertilized by animal manures (See more).

IDOWU OMOWUMI OMODUNNI is a Nigerian Ph.D candidate at Ekiti State University in Nigeria. Her research project is entitled: Women, Environment Degradation and Food Security: the case of Oloibiri Community of Bayelsa State, Nigeria. (See more).

The South African Embassy in Dakar selected the premises of the West African Research Center (WARC) to host the exhibit celebrating their National Heritage Day on October 14, 2015.

The exhibit features paintings and drawings made by Senegalese artists to celebrate the man who has become as a global icon, Madiba, or Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

For the occasion, the South African diplomatic representation in the Senegalese capital invited many ambassadors, particularly those representing African nations in Dakar and officials from the Senegalese government.

After inviting the Director of WARC to welcome the distinguished guests, the South African Ambassador, His Excellency A. M. Shilubane, thanked the Center for hosting the event and also for making efforts to promote the cultural and intellectual visibility of other African countries, particularly South Africa, in Dakar. Ambassador Shilubane explained to the audience the reason for National Heritage Day, while promising to take all the appropriate initiatives to have South African artists (and especially traditional musicians and dancers) visit and perform in Dakar.

The speeches were followed by a guided visit of the exhibit with commentaries and explanations provided by the artists themselves. The event, enlivened with live music in the WARC gardens, was attended by 100 people.

After several weeks of recess because of the Center’s annual leave in August, the book club, “We Read for You” of the West African Research Center is back to business. This new series, inaugurated in June 2015, brings together members of the community to discuss classic works as well as newly minted ones. WARC intends to keep the momentum up by featuring at least one event every month.

The fall 2015 series of “We Read for You” was kicked off on October 15th with the presentation of a novel which has now become a world classic: The Beggars’ Strike (La Greve des Bàttu), by Senegalese author, Aminata Sow-Fall.

The event was attended by many people including the author herself. In her opening remarks, Sow-Fall warmly commended WARC for its contributions to the cultural and intellectual vibrancy of Dakar and for its commitment to furthering academic research, collaborative efforts, and exchanges throughout West Africa and beyond.

The presenter of the day, Miss Borso Tall, a doctoral student at University Cheikh Anta Diop stressed the topicality of issues raised in the novel and dwelt on its social and political implications. The audience of 30 people reacted and enlivened the exchanges with seminal contributions and questions.

Transformation) is the result of a very productive and stimulating collaboration between a US international NGO established in Baltimore, Maryland; the International Youth Foundation (IYF); and the West African Research Center. The funds needed to implement the project were initially entrusted to UNESCO-Dakar by the Japanese Fund-in-Trust for the benefit of the Senegalese Ministry of Youth. When IYF was selected by UNESCO for implementation, they turned to a number of local organisations and ultimately selected WARC as their partner.

After a week’s training at WARC in December 2014, the 16 JETS fellows went back to their respective sites in various parts of Senegal. The next phase, consisting of long-distance training and monitoring, took place from December-January to June-July.

During this monitoring phase, the academic coordinator identifed by WARC to conduct the training activities kept in regular contact with the fellows and was thus able to measure their progress. Progress was assessed in the various modules of the training program including leadership, management, computer skills, civic engagement, and networking

A view of the audience

The July 22 event at WARC provided the JETS fellows the opportunity to inform each other and the training staff about progress made in their entrepreneurial activities and to reinforce their networking skills and opportunities.

T he various resource persons and personalities who attended the event were very impressed by the young fellows’ articulate presentations, their clarity of purpose, and the appropriateness of their businesses and projects. Their civic awareness and engagement as well as their social commitment were also praised by the audience.

As a result of the remarkable quality of the meeting, it was moved that the JETS fellows be involved in the future establishment of a local or panAfrican network for the promotion of social transformation in African societies. The Director of WARC has already started contacting potential members of such a network and planning for a preparatory meeting.

The fellows were encouraged to join organisations like the American Chamber of Commerce in Dakar. This would allow them to be part of a forum where they could promote their ventures for potential funding and partnerships. They were also urged to set up a website for exchange of ideas among themselves and with other youths in Senegal and the rest of the continent.

The event, which was attended by at least 20 people, was wrapped up with a friendly reception in the WARC gardens.

“Valorizing African Cultural Heritage and Thought in the 21st Century”

(WARC, Dakar, July 3-4, 2015)

A group of former students of University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) and former associates of the West African Research Center (WARC), who are now all academics in a number of US universities, are currently in Dakar at WARC implementing a very original and productive study abroad program which teams up local and US students to conduct its learning and experiential activities. The exercise is being conducted under the new umbrella organization they have created, the Dakar Institute for African Studies (DIAS).

The symposium, “Valorizing African Cultural Heritage and Thought in the 21st Century,” was opened by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences at UCAD and the Director of WARC. One of the afternoon panels will be chaired by the Vice-President of UCAD.

The theme of the symposium has drawn a huge crowd of participants — too many for the WARC conference room to accommodate! The large number of participants included graduate and PhD students from Senegalese universities, and UCAD in particular, and their counterparts from overseas. The US students enrolled in the study abroad program of the Dakar Institute for African Studies are also attending.

A well-attended session

International participants hail from the USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and France. Along with their Senegalese counterparts, there were more than 100 people—standing room only—in the WARC conference room.

On Saturday afternoon, June 6, the West African Research Center found it challenging to

From left to right: Pr Ngaidé , the author M. Savané & Mr Sakho

accommodate the crowd that flocked in to attend the presentation of the book written by one of the most distinguished and honorable political leaders in Senegal, Mr. Landing Savané, Secretary General of And Jef, a left-leaning political party.

Landing Savané, a household name in Senegal, Africa and in left-leaning circles around the world, engaged in politics very early and was a major actor in the events which rocked Senegal in May 1968. A statistician by training, Landing Savané was among the specialists who masterminded the major population censuses in Senegal in an effort to adjust national economic plans and projects to the demographics of this West African nation.

Now that he has almost retired from the political scene, he thought it profitable to commit to paper ideas garnered from his long experience as an opposition leader and later, when Abdoulaye Wade came to power, a cabinet member.

The book and its author were introduced by former Senegalese minister of finance and the economy, Mr Pape Ousmane Sakho, who was instrumental in designing the Senegalese structural adjustment plan (known by all as “Le Plan Sakho-Loum” under President Abdou Diouf).

The audience

According to M. Sakho, Africa holds the future of the world not because of her mineral and other still-untapped resources, but because Africa has the needs which industry and other economic activities exist cater to. Africa is the huge market of tomorrow and commodity producers will have to provide for her needs in the future for their survival.

This focus on the human factor and not on the mineral factor was echoed by the other two panelists, Prof Amadou Guiro, Rector of the Sine Saloum University (to open in 2016), Dr Abdourahmane Ngaidé (Department of History, UCAD) and by the author himself who, in his final remarks, urged African youth to believe in the future of their continent and invest all their energies and capabilities in the actualisation of a rosy future for the continent.

The event, which was extensively covered by local and international media, attracted a crowd of nearly 150 people.

long days and nights with filmmaker Jason Silverman and other technicians. They used the facilities as WARC to work on their now completed project, a documentary film on the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene. Their film, Sembene!, was shown for the first time in sub-Saharan Africa on Friday June 19 in the WARC conference center.

The documentary simply but significantly titled Sembene! Is surely the most complete and informative film chronicling the professional and personal life of Sembene Ousmane—a writer and filmmaker but also an inhibited, complex, iconoclastic, revolutionary and trail-blazing personality. The exclamation mark going with the title translates all the baffling and confusing steps and stages Gadjigo had to go through before finally securing an enduring and deep relationship with the old man he ended up calling Tonton (Uncle).

A view of the audience

The film is certainly a major and contribution to scholarship in African film and filmmaking. The audience of 43 people who attended the screening included filmmakers, actors, film critics, men and women in the various sectors of arts and culture, reporters, academics, researchers, students, and friends of both Sembene and Gadjigo.

This panel discussion was held at WARC on Wednesday, May 20th, 2015. It featured the outstanding specialist on Muslim affairs, Professor Abdou Aziz Kébé (Department of Arabic, University Cheikh Anta Diop) and a retired general and ambassador, Mamadou Mansour Seck, one of the founding fathers of the Senegalese army who, after retiring from the military, represented Senegal in Washington, DC as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.

From left to right: Professor Kébé, General Seck , Professor Sène

Professor Kébé started by reminding his audience of the true meaning of the word Jihad in Islam. This meaning is especially resonant for most of the great Islamic leaders in West Africa and in Senegal in particular. As Professor Kébé noted, if Jihad means fight, this should first be construed as a moral and spiritual fight with oneself in one’s permanent quest for perfection, purity and salvation.

According to Professor Kébé, what is presently occurring throughout the world in the guise of a religious crusade is more a political initiative than anything else, and one that tends to divide the world into believers and miscreants, planting a Manichean wedge within and between communities.

A view of the audience

When General Seck took the floor, it was to explain to theaudience the complexity of the situation from a military perspective. According to him, the war on Jihadism cannot be waged as a conventional one. This because the enemy is never easily identifiable since today’s civilian can overnight turn into a disguised faith fighter and create havoc where least expected.

Following the two presentations, the audience of 37 people engaged in a lively exchange with the panelists and with each other.